Clinton Thomas Dent FRCS (7 December 1850 – 26 August 1912) was an English surgeon, author and mountaineer.
Early life The fourth surviving son of Thomas Dent, he was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Alpinism Alongside Albert Mummery, Dent was one of the most prominent of the British climbers who attempted the few remaining unclimbed mountains in the Alps in the period known as the silver age of alpinism. As an alpinist, Dent was very different from Mummery:
Dent's first ascents in the Alps include the Lenzspitze (4,294 m) in the Pennine Alps in August 1870, with Alexander Burgener and a porter, Franz Burgener (of whom Dent wrote 'his conversational powers were limited by an odd practice of carrying heavy parcels in his mouth'), and the Portjengrat (Pizzo d'Andollo, 3,654 m) above the valley of Saas-Fee in 1871. On 5 September 1872 the combined parties of Dent and guide Alexander Burgener, with George Augustus Passingham, and his guides Ferdinand Imseng and Franz Andermatten, made the first ascent of the south-east ridge of the Zinalrothorn (4,221 m); this is the current voie normale on the mountain.Dumler and Burkhardt, p. 136
He then turned his attention to the Aiguille du Dru (3,754 m), a steep granite peak in the Mont Blanc massif that had been ignored by the early generation of alpinists whose ambitions had been focused more on the higher mountains. After eighteen failed attempts with a number of different guides and companions (during which he used ladders to overcome difficulties),Dent wrote: 'We used our ladders repeatedly and frequently, but only to shorten our way up, while exploring the mountain. When we actually climbed it, we used one ladder in one place.' Clinton Thomas Dent, 'The History of an Ascent of the Aiguille du Dru', Alpine Journal, Vol. IX, reprinted as 'The First Ascent of the Dru', in Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, ed. Walt Unsworth, London: Allen Lane, 1981, p. 62 Dent at last made the first ascent of the Grande Aiguille du Dru (the higher of the mountain's two summits) on 12 September 1878, with James Walker Hartley and the guides Alexander Burgener and Kaspar Maurer.Engel, p. 137 He wrote of the Dru:
Together with British alpinists such as Mummery, A. W. Moore and D. W. Freshfield, Dent was involved in the pioneering of climbing in the Caucasus, where he made the first ascent of Gestola (4,860 m) with W. F. Donkin in 1886. Writing in the Alpine Journal a year later, Dent strongly encouraged the members of the Alpine Club (of which he was President from 1886 to 1889DENT, Clinton Thomas in Who Was Who 1897–2006 online at Credo Reference (accessed 7 January 2008)) to travel to the region:
Dent may have been the first person to have written – in his book Above the Snow Line (1885) – that an ascent of Mount Everest was possible.From Sight to Summit: According to Geoffrey Winthrop Young, 'He has often been quoted as saying that the Alps were exhausted as far back as the 1880s, and he once wrote me a friendly warning not to attempt new Alpine ways, "since there is really nothing left worth risking much for"'.G. W. Young, 'Mountain Prophets', Alpine Journal, Vol. LIV, reprinted in Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, ed. Walt Unsworth, London: Allen Lane, 1981, p. 137 He also took part in the establishment of the Alpine distress signal in 1894.Dumler and Burkhardt, p. 63
In Who's Who 1912, Dent gave his recreations as "mountaineering and travel, or any form of hard exercise; art collecting; photography".
Medical career Dent was a well-known Senior Surgeon at the St George's Hospital medical school, London, Consulting Surgeon at the Belgrave Hospital for Children, Chief Surgeon of the Metropolitan Police from 1904, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. The University of Cambridge awarded him the honorary degree of MCh. He wrote extensively, and his publications include studies of post-surgical insanity and heart surgery, and an account of the wounded in the Transvaal War, to which he had been posted as a correspondent for the British Medical Journal. He also had a special interest in dermatology.
Death Dent died at the age of 61 after a 'mysterious attack of blood poisoning' and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. There is a memorial tablet to him on the Britannia Hut above Saas-Fee.Engel, p. 289
Publications Dent, Clinton Thomas, 'The Ascent of Gestola', in On the Edge of Europe: Mountaineering in the Caucasus, ed. Audrey Salkeld, Mountaineers Books, 1994, Dent, Clinton Thomas, Above The Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 And 1880, Kessinger Publishing, 2007, Dent, Clinton Thomas, Mountaineering, London: Longmans, Green, 1892. 2nd edition (pp. xx + 439, with 2 pages of advertisements, 13 plates and illustrations in text by H. G. Willink and others, with contributions by W. M. Conway, D. W. Freshfield, C. E. Mathews, C. Pilkington, F. Pollock). Republished by Kessinger Publishing, 2007, Dent, Clinton Thomas and Christian Albert Theodor Billroth, Clinical Surgery. Extracts from the reports of surgical practice between the years 1860–1876, translated and edited, with annotations, by C. T. Dent and C. A. T. Billroth, New Sydenham Society, vol. 94
References
Bibliography Dumler, Helmut and Burkhardt, Willi P. (1994) The High Mountains of the Alps. London: Diadem. Engel, Claire (1971) Mountaineering in the Alps, London: George Allen and Unwin
External links